


everyone is speaking softly

by theviolonist



Series: to love and grief tribute [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adventures in building, or the new life of Mako Mori.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everyone is speaking softly

People think keeping quiet is a synonym for weakness. They think that when you don't talk it means you agree, it means you accept, you're subservient: there are sayings that go like that, _qui ne dit mot consent_ , silence is tantamount to consent. Back in Japan, in the few hazy memories she has still, hovering in the drift and even outside of it, in her more unstable dreams, she remembers it wasn't the same there: quiet meant respect, capacity, sometimes even power. 

When Mako Mori is twelve years old, she heads outside and holds a small memory ceremony for her parents in a field of gravel. She says the words under her breath, focused, her hair falling in a stiff frame around her cherub-like face -- a mixture of English and Japanese prayers, plus a few things she found in books and that seemed to her to begin to grasp the way you can miss people whom you've known for a second, a few years, before a monster rose from the sea and took them away. Then she falls silent. There are no candles. Mako doesn't kneel.

That same night, when she comes home and sits at the dinner table, face to face with the giant who never once called himself her saviour, she calls Stacker Pentecost 'father' for the first time. He inclines his head in thanks. A small smile stretches his lips, and for the first time Mako understands the value of silence.

*

The first time she sees Raleigh Beckett, Mako is less than impressed. Sure, he can speak Japanese, but being possibly multilingual isn't enough to make up for the shaggy dog look or that annoying tendency he has to blabber on and on. Besides, it's been more than fifteen years and no matter how good-looking her father's last chances are Mako is the iron tip of an arrow, her ambition is calm and burning and nothing can deviate her. She will pilot a jaeger. She will avenge her parents. She will do everything there is to do, everything she can do, and she will do it silently, without being cocksure like Striker's Chuck Hansen, she will understand her role as the heart in the machine, will understand that this is a war in which the armor is just as important as the soldier. If there is one thing Mako knows, one thing Stacker taught her, it's that you cannot pilot a jaeger alone, whatever they told you in the academy. You pilot a jaeger with a co-pilot, and with a jaeger.

Raleigh doesn't stop talking. He talks as she folds her umbrella, he talks as she takes him to his room, he asks her what her sim scores are and when she says she has fifty-one kills – without outward pride – he smiles again – he won't stop smiling – and asks her why she's not one of the candidates she handpicked 'personally, Mister Becket'. Mako considers the things she could say. _Maybe I don't want to pilot Gipsy with_ you. _The Marshall is opposed to the idea. Who says I'm not, Mister Becket?_ In the end silence is always the better answer, or words that sound like silence.

"The Marshall has his reasons. I hope you approve of my choices."

It doesn't matter how he looks at her. She even manages to scourge up a little bit of anger: who is he to watch her like that, like he knows her, like he was there when Stacker dismounted his monster and reached a hand out to her, like he knows how hard she burns for revenge, how much she wants to pilot Gipsy with him and walk on the ocean? He has no right. So she tells him, hoping that it'll dial down his grin, just how unsuited he is for the mission after eight years of working with rubble. The truth is: Mako doesn't like surprises, and Raleigh Beckett is the unknown of this near-perfect equation, the wild electron, the unsolved for X. In a world that is crumbling down all around them she feels that the last thing they need is more things they don't know.

After she leaves she watches him through the peephole. That way it's not a conversation; that way he can't respond. She meant what she said: he's reckless, he'll get his crew killed. He'll get _her_ killed, if she doesn't watch herself. From behind the door he just looks like an irritating man with a smile but Mako knows, knows that when he opens his mouth she won't be able to predict what he says. 

*

When he asks her to spar after having shown off his own lazy, largely ineffectual fighting technique (she knew that: she watched every tape a thousand times over and told herself it was because she needed the right information to pick the candidates and she always does everything perfectly, can't bear anything less, has had it drilled into her from both sides of her ancestry, old and new, but the truth is that there is something in the way he moves – moved –, smooth and assured and giddy like a kid on the first day of school, that confused and excited her), the reason why her cheeks redden and she leans forward is less because of what she saw before he pulled that sweater on than because Mako is the best and brightest but has never killed a kaiju in her life, because she's been dying to climb into Gipsy's giant iron chest for years now, because she's learned every cog and parcel and blueprint of her by heart, night after night, surviving on energy drinks and her calm need for revenge.

She looks up at Stacker, wordless. He stares back at her and for a fleeting second she wonders what it would be like in the Drift with him. Imagination turns to colors – what doesn't, now? –; she feels her shoulders slump with the imagined weight of their shared past, his feet on the shoulder of his jaeger, removing his helmet and reaching for the terrified little girl with the red shoe in her hands. What would she look like from his point of view? But no; Mako would crumple. Nothing quite undoes her like the past.

Finally Stacker gives in. Mako tries not to jump forward: she puts down her shoes neatly at the edge of the mat, bows, takes a breath. Raleigh is talking but the only thing she can hear is her own heartbeat, and she wonders if it helps him, scattering like that in words and words and words until they don't mean anything and they're just words for words' sake. He's afraid of the beating of his own heart but she can't know that yet, will only learn it later, in the Drift, and understand it even further along, curled up with him in the bunks during one pale purple night where not touching each other feels like ripping a sheet of paper, a screech, daunting. She tries not to roll her eyes when Raleigh starts telling her that he won't dial down his moves because -- what? She's a rookie? She's a girl? It doesn't matter. It irritates her a little, but it also amuses her. Her eyes twinkle – seriously?

Her voice is crisp when she answers. "Then neither will I."

It's only when he's sprawled beneath her that Mako finally releases the breath she'd been holding. There's no one else in the room, what had he said before, _why don't you try it out,_ yes, yes, is that what it'll feel like in the drift, her body thrumming, the air between them so tight and _connected_ , every atom catching fire. Raleight Becket's cheeks are red and Mako thinks, he looks better like this, with his mouth shut.

She will have this. She lets go. Raleigh falls limp on the mat, something like adoration in his eyes, bold, unguarded – reckless. Pentecost – she can't call him father now, not like this – nods. _I've seen_. His eyes are cold; afraid. 

*

If she thought she would have to fight for Gipsy, she was wrong. Raleigh looks at her, already, like he wants to give her everything: sometimes she wants to ask him to shut his eyes tight and stop, not in public anyway, wants to tell him that they've only been in the jaeger together once and really, is he asking to get hurt? Because that's the only thing that happens when you look at people like that. Mako doesn't understand how Raleigh can still let himself do it after so much pain. 

"You're not anyone," he tells her. 

She grits her teeth. _Of course I am_ , she wants to tell him. _You've known me for a week and we're all soldiers here, do you know how easy it is to fall on a blade?_ But she doesn't say that.

She sighs. She says, "Alright," not yes but not no either, she says, "Tell me more about Gipsy." 

That kind of information she can never get enough of. No matter how many blueprints she pored over it can never rival what he felt when he was inside her, when he killed all those kaijus with his brother. She doesn't ask about the brother, Yancy Becket - it's not her place - but he tells her anyway, the same way he tells her everything, like it's impossible for him to compartmentalize, to put all those memories in neat little boxes so that nothing spills over. He knows she knows fifty-one kills means nothing when you're knee-deep in the ocean and pumped so full of adrenalin you're not sure you can move your hands without shaking, when your friends are dying all around you, but he tells her that too, that and many other things she listens to patiently, tilting her head from time to time to indicate that she understands. 

Sometimes he tries to get her to talk too but she favors monosyllabic answers, short sharp nods, intersepsed with a soft smile once in a while. She considers explaining it to him, why she thinks silence is better. Maybe he sees it in the Drift. But there are too many things in the Drift, too many threads you can't pull, too many memories that flash and disappear, childhood traumas, small bites of happiness, maybe he can't discern that small detail. So she decides she'll wait. Maybe after all this is over, she'll tell him. Maybe he'll understand; maybe he won't. Either way she'll be able to leave, to turn her back on him and leave, if what he says then doesn't please her. She can't do that now.

Because there's this, too, you see: at the Academy Mako learned about the neural handshake, she learnt about that connection you have with your partner. She answered questions about it in tests, what are the possible physical repercussions of that procedure, even wrote a few essays on it; she gave a distracted ears to the rumors, the bets, pilots are always almost fucking when they're not family ("And even when they are," snarked Jenna Doblers, sneaking a glance at the TV where Striker stood erect and triumphant), do you think Pang So-Yi and An Yuna...

So she knows. She knows, theoritically, what it means to step into the Drift. She spent so much time in the simulator she could pilot it with her eyes closed, she knows how to fight, she's focused, she's smart. But the Drift isn't something you can learn in a book. When she and Raleigh get their hand on the Gipsy commands for the first time, Mako's skin thrumming from underneath, she gives him a tight smile and he returns it, wider, almost calm.

"Don't worry," he says. 

And then: she falls.

It's like... the closest metaphor she could use to describe it would be drowning. Mako is drowning and she didn't walk into the water, the sea came to her and swallowed her up, first her forearms and then her entire self, body and soul, all her memories thrown in the mixer and shaken at hurricane speed. The textbook words dance before her eyes and blur, black scribbles that she can't read, overtaken by an urge to fall backwards, limp, crushed by the weight of memories that aren't hers. _Do you know pain?_ that particular thought is screaming, the name: Alaska and the immense stretching horizon of snow, snow ahead and burning metal behind. Added to that are her own personal tragedies: more monsters and saviors who only come in to cover up the scars, but not heal them. _Do you know pain, Mako Mori?_ Now she does, and she knows its recipe: grief and sorrow and the overpowering need for revenge; mourning, yearning, loneliness, an immense wall whose concrete eats more men than it stops kaijus. For all of Mako's academic excellence there is no way to learn how to be a pilot that doesn't involve falling. 

(He'll tell her later, _falling is easy_ , but he'll disappear into the void before she can contradict him: _no it's not_. It isn't. She'll tell herself that, climbing onto his capsule, holding onto his sodden hair and worryingly pale face, squeezing the breath out of his not-so-dead body: you can't die because I didn't prove you wrong. Falling isn't easy. Falling is never easy.)

Distantly, she hears him scream. "Don't chase the rabbit, Mako!"

The memory is rushing, unfolding like an old roll of film with surround sound and HD picture quality, terrifyingly intense. As she reaches her hand she thinks, maybe you could have told me that before. 

Her mind is full of fuses. Mako is a blurry memory; Mako is a little scared girl; Mako is a mess of wires, a mechanical body whose thundering heart pumps fire. Mako is powerful, finally, powerful even though she's silent, even though she doesn't talk. Look: Mako Mori overthrows the monsters of her past.

When she finally comes to her senses she feels drained, like a victory was stolen from her. Raleigh Becket is cradling her, his metal hands holding onto her forearms; dressed all in black, his face glowing gold, he looks like he comes from a place entirely other. And yet: for some reason, he looks disturbingly familiar. _Welcome to the Drift, Mako Mori,_ rumbles the iron heart, somewhere only she can hear. 

*

It takes hundreds of hours of practice, extraordinary focus and some serious convincing on Mako's part to get around to piloting Gipsy satisfactorily, but they manage. After all Mako has never been one to slack, and the way Raleigh looks at her doesn't undermine his skill in the cockpit, might even, if the legends are to be believed, reinforce it. For one, Mako is happy to stick to theory, which in her experience is more reliable and infinitely less messy. Of course, with Raleigh at her shoulder, there's no way to escape to other pilots, or even the general population of the shatterdome. Save for Chuck, who seems to have taken a clear and unambiguous dislike to him because of his past, Raleigh is easy-going, happy to smile at anyone who so much at turns their head his way. At first it irritates Mako, but she gets used to it soon enough, and she can't say eating in the mess among the noisy bustle of the pilots is always unpleasant. Silent, she feeds on their intelligence, on Raleigh's unadulterated brightness, on Gottlieb's spurs of mathematical genius, on the Kaidonovsky's connectedness, Hercules' wisdom when it comes to the intricacies of war. There is something to be learned from each and every one of them; when they ask her something, she gives short, to-the-point answers and returns to her food. What there is to be learned from her they can take from the way she holds herself, from her ability to listen, absorb, and use information to her own purposes. 

"Maybe I should take your name," Raleigh jokes one day at lunch, as they've just been left by Tendo who was called back to the tower.

Mako blushes, almost chokes on her seafood. "I'm sorry?"

"You know. Every team seems to have the same last name, just thought it'd be fitting."

Mako takes a sip of water, trying to tame down the fire in her cheeks. She knows better than to react like this. "Why shouldn't I take yours?"

Something dark and painful descends on Raleigh's face. "You don't wanna do that. That name's only gotten me trouble, me and -"

"I apologize," Mako demurs. "The question was unfeeling."

"No." Mako waits for more, but for once Raleigh is the one to keep silent. He stares at his plate, his features tight. Mako considers touching him, briefly, but gets lost in the possibilities of contact; the truth is, she's much more comfortable with technology. In the giant hunk of metal she knows which touch will ignite the monster, which one will heal, will awaken, will steer. With Raleigh it's the confusion of synapses and human interaction, and in the end she's too worried to get something wrong, to be, in a way, imprecise; she abstains.

"You don't talk a lot," says Raleigh after a while.

Mako nods. "No."

"Why?"

Mako raises her eyes and there he is, looking right back. His eyes are blue and clear and devoid of any shrewdness; there is a disturbing naïveté in him for someone who's been so hurt, which she likes to think somewhat counterbalances her own occasional cynicism. He is so open, brave but reckless, and she could tell him to stop, that an armor without breastplate isn't much in way of defensive gear, that it would be so easy to reach forward and tear his heart out of his chest. But maybe - maybe she likes that about him.

"They're calling us," she says, lifting her tray, her fingers brushing his sleeve lightly when she stands up.

He blinks, smiles, grabs his tray in the exact same manner, perhaps without realizing it; like all pilots their gestures are connected even outside the cockpit and they often end up gravitating towards each other, acting two parts of a same script, each playing one side of the mirror. He falls easily into her tracks, and it appeases her. Her silence is approval.

*

The Second Kaiju War will always remain characterized in her memories by the endless stream of chatter, his voice narrating each and every one of their manoeuvres: turn right, turn left, don't get lost, I love you. It's overwhelming because Mako has always been able to focus on one sense which she would then hone until it became a spear: sight, hearing, smell, touch. But with him – and in this war – that unity gets lost in the bustle, and Mako cannot remain monochrome anymore, has to hold her breath and take the plunge. He's right there behind her, holding her hand through the wires or only in the Drift, as their giant feet step into the sea, putting the waves in motion, right, left, right. It's like learning how to walk again, in a way, or remembering an old skill, the rusty wheels of bicycle-racing: something in her wakes up and roars as she keeps guard, lips flat, unspeaking.

You've never seen a war like this. There's a reason why the Wall of Life never could have held; the time for walls has passed and the new era demands wars like lightning, repeat Hiroshimas where everything is done in under five seconds, a huge blast of lightning and smoke and after, setting in slowly, the creeping devastation that always accompanies a war. Mako learns that as they stand on the brink of - victory or defeat, she knows now it was victory but still calls it uncertain in her mind, out of respect for things lost. In a day the face of the world changes irrevocably, and Mako's life with it, one ant out of those thousands saved or sacrificed in the fight against the unknown.

There is something to be said for uncertainty. Here she is, revenged, purged inside and possessed with a great whiteness, her stomach churning; and beneath her Raleigh is still falling. "Falling is easy," he says before he tips back and does just that - _falling is easy,_ with a little smile and a mental press and the curling wave of his love for her, which she doesn't understand except maybe on a purely instinctual level, can't process because he is falling, and falling is never easy, and there's been enough separation for one day. Mako's face bears no tears but it's only because there were more pressing matters, she was still holding out hope that death would be precise and immediate. Now she knows she has to stay. Raleigh blinks out of her sight. A handful of seconds later, Mako's mind is floating, under-oxygenated, and her pod breaks the surface. 

For a moment the enormity of the disaster overwhelms her, and as she rises into the clean, salty air she can't see liberated shores, waters underneath which nothing murderous lives, she can't see parades and unafraid children, she can't see her own parents sleeping safely in their inexistent graves, in whatever heaven they belong in, she can't see joy and bliss and she can't hear the comm screaming and she can't breathe, she can't breathe at all. Mako Mori, who perfected the art of breathing, slowly and silently with the sole aim to survive and listen, can't breathe. She coughs, folding in two with pain she couldn't place: in her stomach, in her head or maybe in her heart. Stacker Pentecost is dead. Raleigh Becket is dead. Mako knows better than think she can't live without them, but the alternative seems infinitely worse.

She looks around her. In the distant horizon the shore is still teeming, tendrils of dark smoke rising from the last disaster sites, and brighter, whither ones from the new fires, the ones around which people dance. She looks around and can't see a place for her, can't see beyond death, so much of it, poignant and omnipresent. Tendo is still talking to her in the comm. He must know she isn't dead. She's in a pod, in the middle of the ocean; everything she's trained for, to perfection, is going to become a memory in the next few years, there will no place for soldiers and rebuilding a life takes strength Mako doesn't think she has. She thinks about stepping over the edge of her pod and into the ocean. There are so many people she loves in there, after all. It wouldn't be -

But then. Then something else breaks the surface and it's Raleigh's pod and Mako doesn't scream, Mako isn't the type of girl who screams. Instead she manages to reach Raleigh's pod and she kneels over him. She can feel her mind reach for him and doesn't make any effort to stop it. 

_awake_ , her mind - soul - mouths, half-formed. She is the child when it comes to the art of connection, when connection isn't mechanical. 

Thoughts clap in her mind, snapping one after the other like photographs: he looks like Jesus but he doesn't look dead; he's dead; where am I what am I doing; we have to - With her hands she fights against the pod and finally gets to his face. The skin is cold against her fingers. Her wet hair drips onto his face, the little rivulets following the creases of his smile, leading to his mouth. Against all reason she hopes that it's that water that will jolt him awake, alive maybe, even. After all they've been through, after he's miraculously erupted from the depths, death would be a let-down, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? 

She drags him upwards without thinking and wraps him - she refuses to think, his body - into a crushing embrace. They've never embraced before, for some reason, though they've held each other and they've touched, Mako doesn't think they've ever been apart for more than a few hours at a time since they started this. It only strikes her as crazy now, on the brink of losing this man she doesn't really know, because the way you know someone is when they tell you who they are, isn't it? Peering into someone's mind is different. Without thinking, Mako starts making excuses for herself, for crumbling, for loving him. Raleigh Becket. She remembers the way he looked at her the first time he saw her, the lilt in his Japanese, his moue when he was imitating her at the matches. She thought he was impressive but foolish, strong but broken, heroic but suicidal. Now she knows better than to apply adjectives to him. You can't say with words this -

_awake_

Is it still her, talking without even realizing it? Mako feels empty.

"You're squeezing me too tight," Raleigh says, his breath hot in her sodden hair.

Mako's heart leaps: it suspends, for a brief second, then starts hammering, beats so tightly that she would probably be embarrassed where this any other situation. But Raleigh's arms close around her, he holds her back, he's alive, his palms against the back of her neck, startlingly warm. He looks into her eyes, as ridiculously earnest as always. He smiles. In her ear Tendo has heard the good news but Mako can't hear, can't hear anything but the bustle of Raleigh's smile. 

He nudges their foreheads together. 

_awake_ , he tells her, a perfect answer.

*

It takes a long time for things to come back to normal. After they return to the shatterdome they lock themselves in Mako's room and stay there for three whole days. They sleep in the same bed, entangled to the point of non-recognition, but don't have sex. People knock at the door at first, celebratory and impatient in turn, inviting them to join in the festivities; then, when they realize that Raleigh and Mako can't hear them - they can't: everything outside their own heads is a daze, sound, sight, smell, everything -, they stop. It occurs to Mako later, after they come out, that Raleigh might have liked to participate, but if he did he never tells her. His body is her anchor and he lets her cling, hands clawing at his shoulder blades, choking on her own wordlessness. If for a while she wasn't as put-together as she usually is nobody needs to know. He understands the importance of keeping this kind of secrets. 

They're assailed by a crowd as soon as they step into the mess hall. Heroes, they hear coming from every direction, from the mouths of people they know and people they don't. Saviors. Mako puts a hand on Raleigh's arm and he stops dead in his tracks. The wool of his sweater is soft; yellow, she can tell without looking at him. They only changed their clothes once since they locked themselves in, when they discarded their suits and wet uniforms. Across his chest was a slash of deep red rust, like a scar. He saw her looking and smiled, whipped his shirt over his head. Other scars, but real, this time. She got naked without thinking, too exhausted to be prudish - would you blush in front of a mirror? -, took the T-shirt, boxers and sweatpants he handed her and collapsed on the bed. He wrapped her in his arms again, swallowing her whole narrow frame.

"Thank you," she said in Japanese, and slept. 

But now here they are: heroes, saviors. Mako doesn't recognize herself in the screams and excited cheers. From the corner of her eye, she watches Raleigh beam, wave, return slaps on the back and handshakes. He looks like a giant sun in the middle of all these people, clogging her vision, and for a second Mako feels faintly trapped. But she's a professional, and the war is over (she won't be a professional for long). 

"Thank you," she starts saying, hunger nagging at her stomach - she hasn't eaten for three days. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," even as it rings hollow.

She even answers some of the questions, with short but tireless answers, smiling like a good girl until someone decrees the heroes should be left alone and Raleigh's hand appears in her vision again. One second, she breathes in sharply: she hadn't realized but she was afraid he was gone, something in her chest unclenches. The muscle pumps clear blood - Mako remembers Gipsy, now lost. 

"Aren't you hungry?" she asks. 

Raleigh smiles. For some reason she can't imagine calling him Raleigh out loud, but 'Mister Becket' belongs to centuries ago, when things were different, still unfinished. He thinks the same way, even though saying her name isn't a problem for him: he says it with absolute certainty, alternatively like a prayer and a poem.

"Sure," he says. He grabs her hand, which she gives up gladly. "Let's grab a bite."

The table where they sit could as well be named the Survivor's table (it is, she'll learn later that week); everyone whose face she remembers from those last hours before the apocalypse (not her words) is there, conversing with more or less animation depending on the interlocutors. Geizler and Gottlied are there, the scientific pair from her childhood, older than she remembers them. (She hasn't looked in a mirror since that day. Maybe she's grown older too.) Hercules and the dog, both looking sad. The Kaidanovskys were found on a Malaysian shore with Cherno Alpha, half-dead; it's one of the things Mako heard first when she opened the door, actually, but she's not surprised. Those people can't be killed. 

"Little girl," Aleksis bellows when he sees her.

Mako bows her head in greeting.

"You are alive," he says with satisfaction.

"Yes," Mako says, even though she's not really sure, at this juncture. "So are you."

"It seems so," Aleksis smiles. "Let's toast to that, shall we?"

He raises his glass. Raleigh laughs besides her, his side trembling, exhuming warmth. 

"Toast to our lives," Sasha encourages her. 

Mako picks up a glass of - what is it? - from the table and toasts with it. Then she drinks. Vodka - figures. 

"To the future," Doctor Geizler says at the other end of the table, and Mako is glad she's already put down her glass. She's not sure she could toast to that; truth is, she's not sure she would even know where to start. 

*

They have sex twice before she leaves, in his bunk, her lithe white body erected above him, breathing sharp. Even then she doesn't make a sound; afterwards they lie close, closer than lovers, and don't talk. Still, the surprise on his face when she tells him she's leaving is unmistakable, and were Mako not so closely in sync with him she wouldn't believe it. They've been sleeping side by side for weeks now - how can he not know? 

She's nothing if not pragmatic about it. Well, she tells him, this was good – and it was: now he probably knows her better than most people, including herself, can anticipate her movements but often doesn't –, but it's over, saving the world and the jaegers and all that, life won't wait for me any longer. His call for her is immediate, instinctive: because his most primal thoughts are codified as maritime signals it shoots forward like a distress beacon, a mental pull almost strong enough to get her to stay. In the end, though, it doesn't, because she knows what he wants and it scares her, a deep and essential fear she sometimes calls common sense. Her father isn't there to advise her, but she thinks he would agree that she's not fleeing, simply moving on. In the end Raleigh relents, accepts the phone number and address like keepsakes, cupping his hands to receive the folded scrap of paper. 

良い生命を持っていてください ( _have a good life_ ), she sends blindly in his direction, hoping he'll take the advice. He's bad at taking care of himself, she's seen enough of him to know that, but she's no one's keeper anymore, her revenge is served, life is the proverbial cookie jar and Mako is famished, Mako is young enough and unscathed enough to still be something else than a soldier. 

He sees her off at the Hong Kong airport, pressed on all sides by the moving tide of the crowd, fleeing the rubble and the recent disasters or arriving to reconstruct over the ashes, build anew in a city that has not only dropped in housing prices but also lost in soul, that heavy and encumbering commodity.

"I'll call you," he says earnestly, before being shoved forward into her by a hurrying passenger. 

The resulting embrace shifts from forced to necessary, and soon Mako is holding onto him just as urgently as he's holding onto her, with strength enough to crush him, absorb him into her. Leaving feels essential but Mako can't say she won't miss him, or even that she doesn't expect they'll find each other at some unavoidable junction – and even if they don't, both his face and the clambering sound of his memories are etched onto her fabric, bound to stay there for a long time. 

"I'll miss you," he says again, mashed into her shoulder, and then: "Mako Mori," as though he expected confirmation before he took the name with him. She nods against his cheek. 

"Raleigh Becket," she echoes, just because it feels like that's what he wants and she hasn't said his name often apart from those first few times, 'Mister Becket'. It feels different now, more intimate, like he might have given her the pronunciation in the Drift, between the bites of life, birthdays, loves, various firsts: ra-li. be-ket. She takes it in like she did jae-ger in the early days, first the roll of it, then the meaning: hunter; for him a sturdy and certain presence, warm, dependable. 

A hard, open-mouthed kiss and she tears herself from his arms, climbs confidently into the plane. As they ascend she imagines him looking up from the ground, a tiny blond dot, his clear blue eyes attuned precisely to her sight; behind him, the ghost of her father, stern and proud. She reclines into her seat, closes her eyes. 新しい生命 ( _good life_ ), indeed.

*

Losing Gipsy felt like losing a limb. It was a twofold loss: first her, lost to the monsters, and then, quickly (too quickly) afterwards, the shutdown of the Jaeger Programe. What means the abolition of a cycle of fear gives birth to another, infinitely more insidious - fear of the emptiness, fear of the void, fear, above all, to be molded after a design that has become obsolete. What will become of them, the pilots, the scientists, the officers? All they know is that war. Will children ask Newton in ten years what the monsters on his arms stand for? So they fall on each other, heavily perhaps, take refuge in the bonds forged in the safe cocoon of the Drift. At least this century has given them that: a new place to hide.

Alone on her new continent, Mako toils away, the silence in her head ringing. From so far, the dialogue is fragmented, muted to the occasional dull thrill; but it never goes away completely, and Mako can't help but be grateful for it. She settles slowly, aware of the dangers of building a new home with weak foundations. Instinctively, she knows: mortars and bricks first, beams second, strong pillars third. Furniture is optional. You can sleep in a house with a roof and no bed, but not the opposite. All in all, she decides a few weeks in, she's comfortable in her new life. Even though she declined she declined to participate in the press tour that was supposed to finance the maintenance of the remaining jaegers and subsidize the last K-science projects, she still got a sizable chunk of the proceeds, and there's Stacker's little fortune - enough to live on easily enough, lay low for a bit while she figures out the next step. She doesn't want to decay in inactivity, but she doesn't want to rush herself either.

There are choices in the walls of her apartment. They're white, bleached and dry, miles away from the damp metal of the shatterdomes; the sun shines nine months a year. There are no hooks and no paintings hung, no clocks either - Mako's had enough clocks for the rest of her life, and even if she hadn't, her time is ticking near her ear, inside, and never stops. That clock'll run down some time, too, but Mako is okay with that. The bed is narrow and white, her three pairs of shoes aligned by the door. When Raleigh comes he'll knock twice and hear her say 'enter' without speaking. He'll get better at this, too, understanding what she means without needing to hear her voice. But for now Mako is taking possession of the things she'd lost sight of: her name, her house, her life.

She sits down on her couch - dark red - and opens a bottle of wine, pours herself a glass which she raises in toast.

"Cheers," she says softly, to no one in particular. There are too many people to toast, it's the same dilemma as before, only quieter: too many bodies, not enough graves. They made do with the ocean, in the end. It hadn't always been kind, but it had always been impartial. 

She drinks. Tomorrow she'll start worrying, but for now, there is rest.

*

The question surfaces quickly enough: what do you after a war? And, maybe more importantly, what do you do after piloting a giant robot? Mako is smart, academically as well as physically, with degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and English, but all that feels like sand in her hands now. For the first time she starts to understand Raleigh's work at the wall, construction, building something with hands that had only been known to destroy. Mako feels a little antsy, unsure if she could keep a paintbrush still. Good thing she doesn't paint.

There's a lot of thinking to be done, but Mako's never been a slacker: she hitches up her sleeves and prints everything about her life, builds on her kitchen table - oak - the relative trajectory of her life so far in diplomas, medals and military records. There is nothing there about valor or courage or fearlessness, but it's for the better. Those things have no place in Mako's new life except as a background noise, a residual bustle like those auditory hallucinations the soldiers from the old wars used to have. The papers strewn, the ink drying, Mako sits at the table and wonders what she knows. She knows how to open her mind, and she knows how to fight; but she will not fight. The desire has gone out of her, extinct with her revenge and her father's soul. A singular peace has settled in her heart. Mako Mori, she thinks: I am not a destroyer, monsters or not. What does she know? She knows numbers. She's good with geometry, dimensions and the circumference of things. She knows compassion. She knows patience, silence, hard work. 

She sets her alarm for six a.m. The next morning she rises cleanly, shoulder to shoulder with the sandy pink dawn. She eats breakfast - cereal and juice - in her shadowy kitchen, puts on a suit, brushes her hair. The blue streaks stand electric. _Remember_ , they tell her, tucked neatly behind her ears as she puts on earrings, two dots of ivory. _How could I forget_ , Mako half-smiles. At the door she puts on her shoes, patent leather, comfortable and professional, she grabs her bag, locks behind her. Her apartment looks over the city, a dense and noisy bustle; as she walks down the stairs Mako imagines the vertiginous drop of sky right next to her, separated only by a slab of dry concrete, and aches for it, suddenly and unexpectedly. _Anyone can fall._ Yes, maybe, but Mako Mori has things to do before that.

The walk to the University is a short one, but even at this early hour Melbourne is awake and sprightly, people running in the streets, the dawn dissipated in favor of the harsh sun. Even though her face has been on TV more than she'd have liked those last few months people don't pay much attention to her, the short invisible girl with blue streaks in her hair, which is what she likes, a skill she has perfected over the years. A soldier's skill, she realizes now - strike before they can see you -, but Mako can turn this around. She's confident she can turn anything around. She'll be twenty-one in a few weeks. There is life in her, untapped, undiscovered, quiet and rowdy, there is joy and sadness and other lives folded onto each other like Russian dolls. Mako has faith, enduring, the best of kind of faith there is, faith that doesn't need a god to support itself. She'll be fine. 

At the University she signs up for a slew of classes; her arms are loaded with pamphlets and the computers yield to her easily, as though conscious that she could overpower them without effort. By the time Mako leaves the building she has the date for the beginning of her classes and the morning has not yet concluded. She wonders idly if Raleigh would've had the patience for this, the endless hairpin turns of bureaucracy. Probably not. Longing pierces her like a spear but she ignores it, continues walking, made frail by the awareness that she has no armor, no suit, no Gipsy around her to protect her. But then she remembers: there is no fight. 

_breathe_

Yes. Breathe, Mako Mori, breathe. There are things to be done still, worlds to be conquered, empires to be built. There is joy to be had; the world is no longer doomed. 

*

Fighting against a certain apocalypse had changed things for her, displaced and rearranged bits and pieces in her chest, the organization of her beliefs, hopes and dreams. Now that all that has collapsed, it occurs briefly to Mako that she could undertake anything she chose; but with her mind that likes to put things in boxes and her love of numbers she chooses to build. It seems a fair, logical new dream, and clean, too, cleaner than anything she's ever done. Which doesn't mean she stops training, of course, there is a dojo down the street which she visits twice a week and her fitness regime doesn't change much, she runs and eats like a bird - but still. It makes a difference; slowly Mako stops dressing for war in the mornings and instead dresses for sun, for happiness, for learning. 

Unsurprisingly, she's good in school. She listens, she takes notes, she's quick and inventive, obedient when needed, argumentative on occasion. The other kids soon get over the fact of who she is after she answers their questions, politely and concisely: Yes, I am Mako Mori. Yes, I fought the war and won. There isn't much to be said after that, and if there is, they're polite enough not to ask. She doesn't make friends, but she doesn't need or want to; the people in her head are enough for now, they clog all the space, won't let anyone in with them. They take up all her reserve of love, but Mako doesn't say that, she says she's tired, she has things to do. She still has nightmares without Raleigh's strong frame to block them out, but she suffers them, like everyone. She's not the first, or even the last, war veteran, and they say that time heals all wounds.

Hercules calls her three months to the day after she left the Hong Kong shatterdome. Her laptop pings sharply, twice; his face in the small window, older than she remembered.

"Hi," he says, his voice rough. 

"Hello," Mako replies. "How did you find this address?"

Something crumples in his face. "Stacker... we went through his things. I hope you don't mind. We just wanted to see if you were okay."

 _Who's we?_ "No, it is fine. I am okay." She doesn't add: as you can see. Maybe he can't see, maybe it's not visible from the outside. There aren't many mirrors in Mako's apartment. 

A beat. Herc scratches the back of his head. "Good. Good. You look... good."

"Thank you."

The seconds tick somewhere behind him. Eventually he asks, "How are you doing?"

"I'm studying Architecture."

His face shows surprise, then pride. They talk for a few minutes, small, meaningless things, the weather in Melbourne and what's left of the Jaeger Program, which he's now the head of, though there isn't much body to be the head of. He doesn't seem to mind. He's a hard man, a survivor, and the Program's glory days were short-lived, he says; we were always on the verge on a shutdown, there's not much that's different now. Mako thanks him for upholding Stacker's legacy. Of course, he says, ducking his head so she cannot see his emotion, of course. I loved him too - that he doesn't say.

They're about to sign off, probably for another month, when he calls her back.

"Raleigh's doing well," he says, head still down so she can't see his eyes. "In case you were wondering."

Mako thanks him with a short nod, holds back the million questions that are springing on her tongue, and signs off.

*

There's nothing easy about it. Mako would be lying if she said that she didn't wake up every other night with her hair sticking to her temples, breathing heavy and aching for something beyond her grasp, the tight unity that came with the promise of dying soon, Raleigh's broad back against her breasts, folded in her embrace. But this is the second life she's built through sheer force of will and she's not going to give up just because of a few nightmares; after all children will hear bedside stories about sea-monsters for decades before the fear wears off, buried under new layers of fantastical lore. She takes long tepid showers, steaming the lingering dreams off her skin, grabs her bag and makes her way to the University, day after day. When she's there she's wholly given to her craft, the art of reaching upwards, grazing the sky with flying spires and sentient-looking buildings. She's not stupid, she knows what the appeal is, for her, in those dumb constructions of iron and glass, but she's okay with it. You win some, you lose some - isn't that how the phrase goes? 

After a few more months, and a handful of conversations with Herc, who updates her on the Jaeger Program (still alive, seems as though some things really never die) and on Raleigh - nothing, bare hints, locations, names of cities and people who crossed his path and brought back with them tidbits of his new life -, Mako decides to make new friends. There are a lot of reasons she'd been keeping her quiet, trailing through the streets of Melbourne like one more ghost-presence, but her dead friends won't rise from the grave and Raleigh is somewhere on the other end of the continent, living his own papier-mâché scaffolding of a life. Time to move on. So Mako musses her hair, she puts on lipstick for the first time in too long to count, hoping that the words that make it out of her mouth will be stained pink, vibrant, maybe even bright.

But the University doesn't stop whirring around her. People are walking and talking, gathering in clumps like magnets, parts of a wave Mako is constantly separated from, the residual foam of their high-pitched clusters. When she tries to move her hands won't obey, as though without the burden of other arms they couldn't find their autonomy; there are no words in her mouth, she's standing in the middle of an ocean once again except that this time there no moving forward. _Anyone can fall_ , and for the first time Mako thinks, maybe he was right. A headache buzzes at the back of her skull, she feels heavy, tired. That day she cuts classes for the first time and sleeps for a whole afternoon.

But she is who she is, and the next morning she's up and at it again, reconsidering her calculations - sure, she hadn't thought her scars ran that deep, and maybe she got that tendency to optimism from Stacker, but she's also down-to-earth and practical like he was. Maybe she needs to take it easy. Open up by increments, let a few defenses drop - maybe she needs to learn from that wall, that the thicker your armor is the more violence it takes to break through, maybe there is something to be taken from the water that was there all along, eroding with every lapping wave, weakening the coasts well before the monsters broke through to their world.

In the end it happens by chance. It's not all that surprising, in hindsight; even though she likes to pretend otherwise, Mako's life is ruled by a series of consequences, happenings, places. That, too, she's got to let go of. She's on her way out of the swimming pool she spends most her Saturday afternoons at, towel under her arm, when she trips on a bag that's lying in the way. Her reflexes are enough to keep her from seriously hurting herself, but she does skin her knees lightly on the tiled floor. She winces, gives a sharp, pained cry. She got unused to pain. Weariness, tiredness, those she knows from her time at the dojo and those long, forceful laps in the artificially blue water, but it's been a while since she hasn't bled. 

A young man - Mako assesses him quickly, out of habit: dark hair, tanned skin, probably her age, with wide shoulders that indicate a certain amount of strength - shoots out of the pool and rushes in her direction. He crouches besides her. 

"Are you okay, miss?"

Mako squeezes her eyes shut, does her best to ignore the ambient noise. She wishes she'd stayed underwater, where all the sounds are muted, distorted, harmless. 

"I am fine," she says once her eyes are open again, chlorine dripping from the tips of her hair. "Thank you."

The young man puts a hand on her shoulder. Mako shakes him off with as much subtlety as she can muster; he has the decency to look abashed. 

"You're bleeding," he says, matter-of-fact.

Mako looks down at her knees. Yes, she is - blood is snaking between the tiles, little rivulets mixed with the clean-smelling water. She stands up. "Yes, I am sorry."

He looks confused. "No, I - follow me."

Why she does follow him, she won't be able to say, after - but she does, and that leads to coffee, finding out that they have some common interests (Mako wasn't wrong about those shoulders; it turns out Jonathan - that's his name - boxes in his spare time) and an invitation to a concert at some indie bar with Joanathan's friends. 

"No pressure," he says with a toothy-white grin. Mako decides she likes him. She knows it's only a joke, but she really does feel like there is no insistence in the invitation, no obligation.

She goes home slightly happier that evening, lighter. She sleeps a good night's sleep. Maybe, she tells herself in the morning as she's brushing her teeth, maybe this is better: someone who's removed from all her other worlds, whom she can lose at a moment's notice in the dense city crowd, someone whose face, she realizes, she's already forgotten, handsome and formulaic and perfect for the loose bonds of short-lasting friendship. Start small. She reminds herself of an addict, with all those mottos and slogans, but there are advantages to programs.

(She remembers one day, at fourteen, asking Tamsin about her medications, the array of tubes sticking out from around her. She looked shrunken in that mess of medical paraphernalia, small, but by then Mako had heard too much from Stacker to see her as anything else than a hero, the accomplice of her own survival.

"What's all that for?" she'd asked. "You can't be that sick."

Tamsin had laughed, a hollow croak. 

"No, honey, I am. It's okay, though."

But Mako had seen enough death to last her a lifetime - or so she thought, at the time. 

"It's not okay! People should stop dying." And she'd ranted on and on about the unfairness of death, about her father and her mother and the Hanbō staff they'd given her and the way they'd been taken in such a quick and cruel way, like it was nothing. And she knows: she knows it _was_ nothing. It meant nothing. Just death and the plain horror of it, the burnt city glowing with murderous blue, the orphanage.

But Tamsin was smiling, her eyes wet. 

"You know," she'd said when Mako had stopped talking, exhausted, "sometimes illness is a good thing."

Mako had stuck her bottom lip out, broody and stubborn. "Yeah? When?"

Tamsin had put a hand on Mako's shoulder. "Sometimes you need to be sick so you can recover. Sometimes that's the better solution, instead of waiting for the disease to eat you from the inside; you need to be sick for a while and get all the bad stuff out of your system, out into the open." She'd brushed her cold fingers against the swell of Mako's cheek. "You should think about that."

There's one thing about Mako: she doesn't forget easily. She never forgot those words, afterwards.)

It takes some convincing herself, but she makes it to the concert, several unknown bands performing in the badly lit basement of a nice-enough club. Mako feels uneasy as she walks down the stairs, her shoes, the only heels she's bought since high school, tapping a sharp rhythm on the wood. For a short second as she dives into the stuffy room she feels too shiny, too quiet, completely out of place, and she considers turning back and forgetting the whole experience; but Jonathan spots her from the other side of the room before she can do anything and crosses over rapidly, beaming. His presence relaxes her. 

"Hey," he says, his smile large and unguarded. "I didn't think you'd come."

Mako resists the urge to stick her hands in her pockets. She was so good at being a professional in the shatterdome, but here she doesn't what to do with her body, how to move it, wary of the signals she might send inadvertently. The fact is that the only people her age she's ever been around have been soldiers, and the protocol there is immensely different; even though she has an eye for detail, the finer clues of social interaction tend to escape her. 

"Yes," she says. "I was not sure I would come either."

His smile flashes again. "Well, it's cool that you did. Follow me, I'll introduce you to my friends."

He reaches forward to take her hand but seems to remember she hadn't liked being touched the first time and withdraws, which Mako appreciates. Still, his carefulness reminds her, in negative, of Raleigh: the way he'd invaded her personal space those first few seconds, leaning under the double bow of their umbrellas with his absurdly bright smile and his rough Japanese, the way she hadn't felt fear or disgust, just warmth, even then.

"Of course."

She follows him as he winds his way through the crowd, obviously used to it. On stage the music starts, a female singer with soft orange hair and bejeweled hands singing a rock ballad about love and a mess of other things Mako isn't sure she understands. It's not as bad as Mako expected, but it's not like she's an authority on modern music, either. Jonathan stops in front of an eclectic group made up of five people, all dressed in different styles, colored, holding beers by the neck and laughing, leaning against each other. They look comfortable but not elitist, like they wouldn't mind widening their circle to let her in. Jonathan turns back around to give her a comforting nod, and Mako remarks belatedly how different he looks from their first meeting, with his square glasses and plaid shirt and air of easy belonging.

"So, here's the gang," he says. "This is Sabrina," he points to a small black girl wearing bright red lipstick and a truly impressive collection of bangles. "Call me Sab," she says, holding a hand out.

The introductions are made by the rest of Jonathan's friends. 'Pedro' turns out to be a lanky, younger-looking man who describes himself as an 'alternative musician', whatever that means, 'Constance' is androgynous and slightly scary, with long winged eyes in which Mako recognizes a Japanese slant, 'Olivia' has a dirty-blonde ponytail and plaid shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow and 'J.C.' looks like a younger Hermann, down to the cane leant against the pillar behind him.

"Nice to meet you," says Mako, bowing a little. 

The night goes well. Jonathan's friends are funny and easy-going, they take her in without questions, don't press her to talk more, explain what exactly she's doing here, a random girl with grazed knees collected by their comrade on a poolside. Fortunately for her, J.C. is much more socially gifted than Hermann ever was, and they discuss her studies for a while after he reveals that he thought about taking up Architecture before ultimately choosing Design. After the others head on to the dance floor, Olivia stays at their booth with the two of them, reclining against the leather and bobbing her head lightly to the music, sprawled backwards like there really is no danger in the surrounding shadows. The conversation dies quietly they let it, content with watching the others let loose a few feet away, dancing closely together, embrace upon embrace, partners changing arms in a living carrousel. At Mako's right Olivia's jaw catches the light - she can't help but let her gaze linger, appreciate the softness of her features and her dark, vague green eyes. After a while she yawns and stretches, catches Mako looking. Her eyes spark.

"I'm going to get a drink," she says, jerking a thumb in direction of the bar. "You wanna come?"

Mako looks around, but nobody's listening. J.C. is looking at Sabrina, who's dancing with her head down, her bangles clinking. 

"Yes. Alright."

They get two more beers at the bar. That, too, is strange: in the shatterdomes, from the moment Mako was allowed to drink it was only ever strong alcohol, to spur you to fight or reward you after a victory, warm your guts for a few hours before heading back out again; there was just no time for this mellower type of recreation. It tastes bland on her tongue but she appreciates that new reminder that she truly has left the war behind, that there is no need for armors or flasks of strong liquor to withstand life anymore. Outside the night is sweltering, the sky taped with dark velvet - they drink in silence, sneaking glances at each other once in a while. Mako is intrigued. She's no stranger to flirting, or even romance, even before Raleigh - though she wouldn't call that 'romance', exactly -, but all the same this is as strange as the rest, a somewhat familiar experience transposed in an entirely different universe. 

"So," Olivia says eventually, "you're that girl, right? From the war?"

Mako's entire body stiffens. Olivia must sense it; she immediately apologizes. "Sorry, I didn't mean to spook you. I'm not going to ask you for your autograph, don't worry." She gives a short little laugh, which Mako doesn't join in on. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Mako considers not answering, but her politeness gets the better of her. "Building," she says. 

Olivia nods as though she understood, shakes a cigarette out of a pack and presents it to Mako. Mako shakes her head. Olivia shrugs. Her profile lit by the rotund moon, the burning tip of her cigarette protruding from between her slack lips, Mako looks again, this time less discreetly, uninhibited by the alcohol. 

"Guess we should head back on inside, then?" Olivia asks inanely, even though she's only just started smoking. Mako nods, but neither of them move. 

Olivia turns around. Now that she's not just a profile she looks like a real girl, and it makes Mako calmer, more confident, maybe. She steals the cigarette from her fingers, takes a few puffs on it, the memory of Sasha and Aleksis's cigars searing in her mind. She ignores it, preferring instead to concentrate on Olivia's bright laugh, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, even though that too is a reminder -

"Do you miss it?" Olivia asks once she's stopped laughing, out of the blue. 

Mako considers the question. It could mean anything, really: does she miss the war, or piloting Gipsy, or the fame that came with being one of the winners, one of the survivors. It could mean something else entirely. Either way it's a much too difficult question to answer at this time of night because it requires digging and it's in Mako's new resolutions to stop digging, stop searching for things that are finished, sealed, unchangeable. She leans against the wall, melting with the shadows; looks up at Olivia, jerking up her chin. She does remember some things. 

Olivia crushes her half-smoked cigarette stub under the heel of her boot. Her nails are blunt against the nape of Mako's neck; her mouth tastes faintly of smoke, beer, of normal people in strange places, of lives unlived. 

*

Mako had forgotten about sex. What happened with Raleigh was more than sex, it was overwhelming, all-encompassing; there were moments where she were afraid that she wouldn't be able to part from him when she woke up, that their skins would somehow have become one skin, their minds one mind, their hearts one heart. It's not that she wouldn't do it all over again if she had the choice - she would; and she would save Stacker, too - but this is calmer, the kind of thing she needed to get back on her feet. Sex keeps her mind busy when she doesn't really want to be thinking, it gets her adrenalin up and it loosens her, temporarily settles the buzzing beneath her skin. The good thing about it, with Olivia, is that having sex with her - they don't call it dating, mostly because it's not - comes with a set of friends, excursions through the city, and amazing restaurants, all of which Mako is definitely not frowning at. As though she'd been there forever, the gang sweep her in: they take her to Union Lane, where she gapes at the explosion of colors with wide eyes while they laugh at her amazement; show her the best places to eat Ethiopian and Italian (it turns out her neighborhood is the best in town for Italian food), among others; rib her about her and Olivia, their eyes full of sparks. 

They don't exchange a lot of personal details, which is fine with Mako; in fact, she doesn't even know what most of them do, and even though she probably heard or saw Olivia's last name somewhere, she's long forgotten it. Knowing that changing her number would be enough to lose them in the dense bustle of the city is a reassuring guarantee, one that allows Mako to be more juvenile and affectionate with them that she probably would be with lifelong friends, had she any. For the first time since she climbed on that plane, Mako feels like she might be on the right track. Yes, she thinks - Stacker would be proud of her, that silent ghost who sometimes glides beside her when she feels melancholy, his eyes full of sage advice, no longer the blade-like presence that hurt her so much in the beginning. Making peace with death was a long, difficult process, but Mako did it as well as she does everything else, and even though there are parts inside her that feel as though they're made of stone, she finally has a future to look forward to.

She still spends the majority of her time in school. She's intent on graduating as soon as she can and start working; inactivity doesn't suit her, and besides it makes her antsy. Even Olivia notices it, curling sleepily around Mako's stomach after a post-sex nap as she's drawing, blueprints for gravity-defying buildings. 

"This looks vertiginous," she says, her voice like smoke. 

Mako hms, focused on her work. She's right, this one would probably never hold - but there is something to be said for drawing your dreams, the architect's equivalent of a secret journal. 

Olivia's hand skims on her bare hip. "Come back to bed," she whispers, her breath hot against the nape of Mako's neck. 

Mako chuckles at the tickling touch. It occurs to her, in a dazed thought as she sets aside her papers and reclines into Olivia's waiting embrace, that she's never laughed so much than in those last few months; she feels sunny, her skin glowing from the inside, golden with possibilities for the future. 

*

Mako doesn't keep things. It's not who she is: from the beginning, that fateful afternoon where she acquired her reputation as a survivor by losing as much as is possible to lose at once and not disappearing, the belief was carved into her heart that when you lose, you lose everything, and trinkets and baubles don't change that. There are no photographs she lugs around with her, no weapons she loves more than others, no pieces of jewelry holding precious meaning; the thing that comes the closest are her bangs and that shoe Stacker used to keep, from their first meeting, but even that was lost in the final attack, maybe to the monsters, maybe to the fallacies of the aftermath burst of tidying, who knows. The point being, Mako doesn't keep things, and maybe her leaving Hong Kong had something to do with that, maybe it didn't - there are memories but Mako is good at getting rid of those too, good at compartmentalizing.

So it makes sense, doesn't it, that a year and a half later she feels like a new woman, half-purged of things that went on far from where she is now, both in her mind and in someone else's, the whole array of painful images: underwater explosions, endless expanses of snow, death and death and more death and corroding electric blue, and the final cheer, and Raleigh's damp forehead against hers. Over those others have superseded, not necessarily better but different, a lot of them to do with sun where there was only hurricanes, calm where there was the clang of metal. Mako is tanned and were it not for her name which she hasn't changed she would believe she's succeeded in making herself anew; even her skin has taken new lovers and the others have disappeared in the mist, other countries other memories older times. (Mako won't tell you that she still believes they'll meet again. It doesn't matter. It's less a hope than it is a certainty, a constant in her scenarios for the future, two knocks on the door.)

Her affair with Olivia comes to a natural end but they remain friends, and even though they no longer have sex regularly Mako still asks her over once in a while, when she's too lazy and too sad to search for someone else to be the warmth in her bed. She's accepted that her experiences in the Jaeger Program have left her with a need for physical contact she didn't have before, and she deals with it gracefully, without much fuss. Olivia understands. Jonathan, Sabrina, Pedro and Constance are still planets in her system too, drifting in and out of her life with ease, as irregular and happy as if they truly were carried by the wind. Mako learns not to mind, to follow their crazy plans, two-days road trips to cities with strange names and skinny dips in the ocean. One of their mottos has to do with the fact that they're young, which is another fact Mako comes to realize about herself; she turns twenty-two, surprised at herself for having lived that long.

At the end of the day she climbs her six floors, closing her eyes on the landing between fourth and fifth to indulge in her daily reverie of that drop of violently blue sky stretching just outside her reach. When she turns the key in the lock there is a place waiting for her that she dares call home, finally, whose layout she could recognize with her eyes closed, in the dark - and has, many times -; she settles back into her couch with a book, her feet tucked under her thighs, a fuming cup of tea on the table in front of her. No, she's not waiting - she's a builder, and the amazing thing about that is that there are always things to be built, foundations to be laid, pillars to be erected; that the sky's no limit, and death isn't one either. Once you come to realize that, maybe then you start to be free. 

Maybe, Mako thinks, standing in front of her windows watching the dripping sun go out. Then she turns around: her life is only beginning and there are a thousand things to do, lives to be lived, clouds to reach. When she hears those knocks at the door, she'll be ready. She'll have peace cradled in her hands, ready to share.


End file.
